YouTube on Friday opened the flood gates to shows in good standing and are allowing shows with a minimum of 100 subscribers to get access to their Live Streaming Platform.

It has only been a couple of months since they opened it to shows with 1000 subscribers. We all knew this was coming but it is really great news for podcasters that are doing live shows.

Lets talk about the impact here.. Companies like Ustream have their ProBroadcasting services where you can purchase up to 100 ad free hours for $99.00. While YouTube does not guarantee ad free streaming, so far their ads have been non-obtrusive.

One of the reasons I had stopped using Ustream as a primary streaming provider was that the ads in their “free streams” became intrusive. No one minds a company making money when they are providing a free service but the ads on Ustream were driving my audience away and was the #1 complaint for months.

On YouTube partner sites get to share in the revenue of any advertising run which incentives folks to start using YouTube as their primary live platform.

This change has to impact the bottom line of companies like Ustream, how will these companies survive this is my next question. The provided production tools Ustream provides may help, but it is obvious that YouTube understands where the media space is headed..

The best part about the YouTube Live experience is that you get to promote it on your own sites with the video embed, and you can cross promote your YouTube Channel. This is a win for content producers. See the other announcements YouTube made as well

While some people have suggested that podcasting is a dying art, the data indicates an entirely different reality. Apple announced on Monday, July 22, 2013, that there have been more than 1 billion podcast subscriptions through the iTunes store. Thats a big number!

If you visit the iTunes store today, and visit the part about podcasts, you will see the image that accompanies this blog. It is part of Apple’s special promotion to commemorate the 1 billion podcast subscriptions.

The data from Apple notes that the 1 billion subscriptions are spread over 250,000 unique podcasts. The podcasts are in over 100 languages. More than 8 million episodes have been published in the iTunes store (so far).

Those 1 billion podcast subscriptions do not necessarily equate to the same amount of “listens”. Many people, myself included, have fallen behind on listening to the podcasts that they have subscribed to. Personally, I have more podcast episodes that are sitting in my iTunes, waiting for me to get around to listening to them, than is reasonable. My intent is to get to them all, eventually!

Jeffrey Powers goes all Pop Idol when he chats to Jackie from Griffin Technology about the newly announced MicConnect, which connects iOS devices to XLR mics with phantom power.

The Griffin MicConnect is a small brick adaptor with an XLR socket (input) on one side for the microphone and a 3.5 mm jack on the other to connect into an iPhone, iPod or iPad. A 3.5 mm socket provides for headphone monitoring of the sound source and for condenser mics, the unit takes two AA batteries to provide phantom power (48V).

(As an aside, I’m not 100% clear if this is iOS only – the 3.5 mm jack looks pretty standard and there’s no reference to special apps being required so if Android is your OS of choice, it might be worth contacting Griffin directly.)

Included in the interview is Griffin’s updated Mic Stand Mount, which is now compatible with all iPad models (not Mini), and unsurprisingly holds an iPad on a mic stand. Jeffrey reckons the MicConnect and the Mount are a great combo for the mobile podcaster. Pricing-wise, both the MicConnect and the Mount are $39.99 but the MicConnect won’t be available until June.

The folks over at New Media Expo are offering a scholarship to the New Media Expo University to up and coming content creators. This is a great opportunity for someone just starting out podcasting, blogging & web streaming that may not have the financial means to get to New Media Expo this coming January in Las Vegas.

I have been asked to judge the entries that are being submitted in the podcasting category. While I will not be commenting on the process to pick the winners, please review the guidelines laid out on the site to apply. I look forward to reviewing the entries submitted.

New Media Expo needs to be commended in stepping up to the plate like this, it shows their support for the podcasting space and their commitment to the podcasting community.

This week I am joined by Rob GreenLee of RobGreenlee.com and Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome.com on Saturday Morning Tech Show. We talk tech and try to decipher why there are great YouTubers / Podcasters yet very few of those two groups of content creators have been successful at both. Note this is a monster show but I think you will find this to be very enlightening.

What started as a Google+ Hangout between TPN members resulted in a serious debate and discussion on YouTube and Podcasting when Michael Mozart joined the hangout.. It’s a great discussion probably one of the best Saturday Morning Tech Shows yet. Regular Guest Rob Greenlee is also onboard..

Podcasting since December of 2004, more than once I’ve thought of a podcasting “dream” device. It would be a small hand-held all-in-one device that would allow me to produce the perfect podcast and upload it and post it with a single tap of a button.

This perfect integrated podcasting device doesn’t exist as of yet, but with Blogtalkradio.Com’s free CinchCast iOS/iPod/iPad/iPhone app, the ideal software/hardware solution is closer than ever to actually meeting my dream for the ideal podcasting solution.

CinchCast is a free app available for download in the iOS App Store. Once installed, in order to use the software one must create a free account at CinchCast.Com. After the free account is created, it becomes possible to record audio from within the CinchCast application. Once you have finished making your recording, simply go to the next step and type in what you were talking about. The remaining and final step is to automatically upload your recording to the CinchCast server, where a real podcast is automatically created with an RSS feed.

CinchCast iOS Beta uses the built-in iPod Touch 4 microphone. The recording quality is decent, but the 64kbps bit rate the app uses is not adjustable. On the other hand, recording at 64kbps in mono results in compact MP3 file sizes.

The iPod Touch itself has a surprisingly good built-in microphone which works extremely well in quiet areas. However, trying to record audio in a moving vehicle is likely to result in heavily distorted recordings because of the deep bass frequencies generated by the tires moving against the pavement so depending on the microphone you are using be forewarned.

Of course, CinchCast iOS Beta has no way to play or incorporate pre-recorded audio clips or jingles. CinchCast excels in allowing one to record and immediately upload a podcast MP3 file with just a few taps on your iPod/iPad/iPhone/iOS device.

My team at RawVoice this morning released version 2.0 of the PowerPress Podcast plugin for WordPress. The work committed to this update was well over 1 month of coding. I have been running the beta here at Geek News Central for several weeks, and many of you have already commented on the new video player experience as being superior to what you have seen on other podcasters websites. Now that the update has been made available to the 80,000 podcaster worldwide we are excited to watch the implementation across the web.

I have created a short video on some of the coolest features and hope you will take a few minutes to overview the update. Please note that the video embed below is from the actual posting on our official PowerPress site. No longer do we need Blip or YouTube we can share our content from our sites with the embed feature.

Since Apple introduced Podcast in the iTunes application in June of 2005, there has been a feature where a podcaster could ping Apple to let them know that a new episode had been published. This guaranteed that time sensitive content was able to get listed and be available to subscribers with a few hours of its posting. Sometime earlier this week Apple removed that feature. It came to light when we discovered that pinging apple now redirects you to a online version of iTunes.

Completely unannounced to even their support people, Apple.com has removed the documentation how to ping iTunes when your podcast updates from the official iTunes podcast specifications. I cannot even start to explain how bad an impact this is going to have. Apple says they will now update directory listings once every 24 hours. Problematic if Apple just visited your site 5 minutes before you hit publish on the hottest story of the decade. Podcasters with evergreen content this change means little.

Since July of 2005 when Apple introduced Podcast to iTunes this has been a critical feature in more ways than one. From a tech support angle, it makes it much harder for my company to support podcasters when they are having trouble as well.

In recent days my audience members complained that the listings were not updating for a couple of days after the show was published which is suspect because once subscribed to a show the listing in iTunes should update automatically when you sync your phone. This is going to negatively impact on listener numbers either way, and also make shows that have time sensitive information less relevant. If you are a podcaster you need to voice your opinion very loudly with Apple. We need this feature re-instated to ensure that podcast listings on iTunes get updated in a timely manner.

Adam Curry is a clever guy. Back in 2004 he was working on the concept of podcasting. Now he is pioneering smartphone apps.

About 6 months ago, Adam Curry came out with a free iPhone application called “The Big App Show.” Each day, day in and day out, Curry records a new video of himself demonstrating an iPhone app.

The Big App Show is now available for Android. The concept is the same, except with the Android app the apps Curry demonstrates are obviously for Android and are available in the Android Marketplace.

The Big App Show is a very witty app that really takes advantage of the power of Android and iPhones. Curry is adding value by demonstrating the apps right on the screen as he talks rather than giving dry descriptions. He puts out a new app video on both the Android and iPhone platforms every day of the year.